


Lord of the Wood

by acidtonguejenny



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4966135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtonguejenny/pseuds/acidtonguejenny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They warn you not to take the path through the old wood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord of the Wood

They warn you to stay out of the wood, but the quickest way to your destination is the old, overgrown messenger’s path that weaves through the redwoods. Your Guild map says it’s a viable road and may cut as much as a fortnight off your journey. Local superstitions are not to be unheeded, but you’re behind schedule as it is, and must take the risk. 

The wood is old one, and does indeed have an ominous air to it. It gets in your blood in the form of a shiver you can’t shake; it puts your teeth on edge and raises the small hairs on your neck and arms. You draw your cloak tighter about your neck, keep your bag of postage close, and rest a hand on the hilt of the short sword on your belt.

The trees are larger around than your arms can reach, and are the tallest you’ve seen in all your travels. The forest floor is a padded sea of leaf matter occasionally breached by thick, gnarled roots. Sunlight does not penetrate the canopy. Sounds of animal life are few, and always far away. 

The path you walk is little more than a deer path marked by waystones. You dare not stray from it.

As the first day draws to a close, you finally allow yourself to think, perhaps you ought to have circled the mountains instead.

Your dreams are horrible. Something stalks you beneath the surface of dark water, and you cannot move to flee. You are blind and deaf, and your tongue has been cut from your mouth. You wake in a sweat, with a start, and spill water down yourself because your hands shake when your take a drink from your canteen.

But your course has been chosen, and you will not shy, no matter how much you find you want to. 

By the fourth day, your head pounds in time with your heartbeat, and your jaw aches fiercely from grinding your teeth. You feel weak, though you have eaten your usual provisions these past days. Your dreams have only grown worse, and you will sleep for days once you escape this place.

Worse yet, you have caught sight of a large, skulking _something_ out of the corner of your eye. It is long-limbed, light of foot, and it has followed you for two nights now. Great twisting horns adorn its head, and a long, spiked tail swishes after it when it disappears in the gloom. You have slept in trees since you first spotted it, but still wake with the knowledge it has visited you in the night. 

Your map says that you should have emerged on the other side of the wood days ago.

On the seventh day, you come upon a great, yawning crevasse that splits the path. You look from end to end, eyes searching for a break, a narrow place you might jump, but there is nothing. You will have to go around, off the road. Away from the protection of the waystones, and into the creature’s domain.

There is a waystone just on the other side of the divide. You mumble a prayer to it, squeeze the hilt of your sword for courage, and step off the path.

You imagine you hear laughter in the distance, feel breath on your cheek. 

It is close to nightfall when it comes for you. You have glimpsed it far off, closing the distance at a teasing, leisurely pace for hours. 

The creature is in another form when it finally appears before you. It presents itself in the shape of man with the heavy horns of its hunting form. Its skin is colored and lined like the thick bark of a redwood, and moss clings to it. It wears a cloak of black feathers loosely draped around it.

Most frightening of all, it is astonishingly beautiful, and you recall dozens of tales of curious gods and unwitting mortals. 

Its golden eyes hold yours, and it is difficult to break its stare and bow your head, as instinct tells you you must. 

“Great Lord,” you beseech it. “if I have given offense, forgive me.”

You sense it is amused. You lick your lips nervously, listening to its approach. The brush of the train of its cloak over dead leaves. Its hand touches your head, fingers carding through your hair.

You open your eyes, and see a part in its cloak. Instead of human feet, it stands on sharp cloven hooves.

The hand tightens cruelly in your hair and pulls you upright. You gasp in surprise and bite your lip to quiet yourself. Hold your breath as it studies you with those dully luminescent eyes, seeming to give extra attention to your displayed throat. 

The laces that hold your tunic closed at the throat part, cut by an invisible blade. Your throat works as you swallow.

“You would pass through my lands without paying obeisance.” The creature says, and the power of its deep voice resonants in your belly. You shudder in its grasp. 

Its lips turn up slowly in a smile. It pulls you up straighter, higher; you struggle to stand, muscles tight and trembling. They soon begin to burn. 

“While you are in my lands, I am your master.” 

“Yes, my lord.” You say. 

It pauses. The only sound that comes to your ears is that of your own quick breaths. The creature doesn’t breathe. If it has a heart, it doesn’t beat.

“Please your master, mortal.” Says the creature, and it releases you.

You fall to your knees, gasping. You remember to breathe again.

“What would please you, my lord?” You ask, fingers digging in the leaves.

That is wrong. You have fouled. The creature, above you, goes stiff with fury.

“You dare?” It says, terribly calm. 

“I—do not. Forgive me.” You stammer.

“You ask much of your master, mortal.”

You cannot think what to say. You think furiously, thoughts blurred with mounting panic. You have nothing to offer. Your postage is not yours to give, and not likely to be valuable enough to tempt the creature. You consider your own inventory, but it is purposefully unremarkable. Messengers travel with only the necessities so as to not tempt bandits on the many long roads.

You have nothing to give. Nothing to offer.

You recall the tales, stories of gods on the mortal plane you learned as boy, and feel a kernel of hope. 

Gods do not care for earthly riches, but symbolism. Life, blood, and bone. Prayer and devotion.

In the stories, at least.

It is all you have. 

With an unsteady hand, you draw the strap of your satchel over your head and set the bag aside, followed by your thick cloak. You pull the ruined laces of your tunic free, so the linen bags at your front, revealing the line of your neck and your chest. You roll up your sleeves, and draw your sword, stabbing the point into the leaves.

The creature watches, silent, golden eyes as cold as a snake’s. 

You meet its gaze, wish you had the courage to pray, and draw your cupped hands down your sword. Blood runs down the blade’s edges, puddling in the leaves.

The pain takes a moment to hit. Cold air washes over the wounds, and you hiss at the sting.

The sword falls over when you release it. Uncaring, you extend your bloody palms in offering.

“For you, my lord.” You say. Your hands shake. “I offer myself. All I have. All I am.”

What if the tales are wrong? What if they are but tales?

The creature’s eyes grow brighter as you watch. Gods help you, you have done the right thing.

It takes your hands in its own, long fingers curling around your wrists. Its strokes the split folds of the cuts with its thumbs. Its skin is cold, and the touches are strangely soothing. 

There is a stirring beneath the creature’s feathered cloak that draws your eyes. The creature drops your hands, holds your face, and you reach out, move the cloak aside.

An approving rumble comes from above, and the hands on you pet your cheeks tenderly.

Beneath the folds of feathers the creature has grown erect. Its legs are jointed like a stag’s hind legs, though the bark-like skin persists. Its cock is long and curved, and emerges from a sheath of skin.

It is a deep, moist red, and glistens wetly. Your mouth fills with wetness, and you want to taste it with a voracity that you know is not all your own. You don’t try to resist.

It’s cold and smooth, heavy on your tongue. The tip is thin enough to edge down your throat.

It tastes like spring water, like soil and stone. It _pulses_ against your palate. 

You have found the creature’s heartbeat. 

Your hands leave bloody prints on the creature’s hips and thighs, its sheath and the base of its cock as you pleasure it, trying to use tongue and teeth and lips to full effect. The weight of a cock in your mouth is unfamiliar, but arousing. Your trousers grow tight as you work.

The creature pulls you off after what feels like an age. Your aching jaw hurts even more now. Your lips feel swollen, and your tongue numb with tiredness. For a moment you simply breathe.

Without your willing it you sat back, elbows crunching leaves. Your trousers are sliced away like your laces were. Sensing the creature’s intent, you pull your tunic up and away, baring your vulnerable belly. 

The creature falls forward, changing into something closer to its bestial hunting form as it descends upon you. Its red cock drips wetness that you feel blot your groin. You fist your hands in the feathered cloak and hold on.

The creature grunts like an animal as it thrusts its cock against you, seeking. Its face has pointed into something like a wolf’s snout, or perhaps a stag’s, and its voice has lost what few human qualities it once claimed. 

You know what the creature wants. As a man, you have only one thing to offer it. You lift your hips in aid, and gasp as the point of the creature’s cock finds your hole and presses in. It is slick with mucus and saliva, and smoothly penetrates deeply with every move the creature makes. Its cock thickens closer to the base, until you’re stretched open painfully wide.

It had felt much thinner in your throat. You pull hard on the feathers between your fingers. They are no longer part of a cloak. 

You can feel the creature’s pulse, that beat like a parade of war drums ringing through your body, resounding in your chest and confusing your own heartbeat. You drop your head, gasping. The creature takes its pleasure on you mindlessly. 

The world blurs as it moves over you. The woods seem to creep in, blotting out what sunlight comes through the trees. More great redwoods spring up in the spaces between, until they are too thick to walk through. Malevolent whispers grow in the back of your mind. Meanwhile, the creature’s cold cock grows warm in you. It’s thick pelt of plumage scratch your chest, pinions poking. Short fur on the creature’s hindquarters rub raw your inner thighs. 

You scream hoarsely when you reach your peak, thrashing against the creature’s front. It continues moving, thrusting, heedless. On, and on, and on. 

You fall into exhausted sleep long before it stops.

When you wake, the wood is brighter. Day has come. You’re wearing the tattered remains of your study traveling ware, and are filthy with dirt, blood and spend.

You’re hungry. Thirsty. You lips crack when you breath. Your gut clenches in angry knots. 

It has been days. The knowledge of their passage is clear in your mind.

You’re back on the messenger’s path, an arms-length from a waystone carved like a crow. The one, you realize, you had seen on the far side of the crevasse.

You look back down the path, and see no such crevasse. The path is rolls out before you in either direction, uninterrupted. 

Your breath rattles in your chest. You dig food out of your pack and eat quickly, swallowing too-big bites. From your canteen you only wet your mouth; it is despairingly low.

You tie your clothing around you as best as you can, shoulder your things, and wrap you cloak around your shoulders. You hands, when you look, are unwounded. White scars mark where you had made your offering, as if long healed.

You study them as you limp down the path. 

Eventually, there is a break in the trees. You can see the line of the King’s Road ahead. As you stumble out of the wood, you kiss the scars on your palms.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as a fill for Hannibal Kink Meme, but came out more original : )


End file.
